child of the earth
by once upon a december
Summary: AU Harry leaves the dursleys and grows up where noone cares what his name is. this is my first story, so reviews are greatly appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: If I owned Harry potter, I would be rich and I wouldn't have to write on a fan fiction sight. Enough said, so on with the story….

**Odd Pastimes**

Once upon a time, there was a boy. This boy had a mob of raven colored hair and the most brilliant emerald eyes you could ever see hiding beneath a pair of spectacles. He was quite handsome, for a five-year-old boy, that is. This particular boy was currently wearing a huge baggy tee-shirt that ended an inch above his knees and a pair of faded jeans that were twice his size were being held up by a thick, worn leather belt. As strange as his appearance may seem, his location was even stranger. He was sitting on a lumpy mattress in a cupboard under the stairs.

The boy was currently staring up into the corner of the cupboard, seemingly contemplating the spider that was weaving a web. His concentration on the web would have been unnerving to anyone who might have seen him; but there was no one to see him. The house was empty, except for a five year old boy that was locked in the cupboard under the stairs.

The boys name was nothing spectacular, and didn't even have a nice ring to it. All the same, it was the boy's most prized possession; his parents had given it to him. His name was Harry Potter.

Why was this boy locked under the stairs? The Dursley's, Harry's only living relatives, had gone out for dinner to celebrate their son's birthday. Dudley had just turned six, and according to Vernon and Petunia, that was a major accomplishment. Knowing that they could not bring the boy and that they could not hire a babysitter on such short notice, the figured that they would just leave him home. Knowing that the boys freakish nature would infect the house, they had decided to pen him up, and what better place to do so, than his room- the cupboard under the stairs?

Staring up at the spider, Harry's mind wondered. _Why were his aunt and uncle so mean to him? Was it something he did? No, he hadn't left a mess at dinner yesterday…he had even cleaned up the crayon marks that Dudley had left on the walls._

Coming up with no conclusion, he laid his head down onto a flat shapeless pillow and stared at his ceiling. Knowing that sleep would not claim him for another few hours, he continued to stare at the spider web.

The Dursley's, often locked Harry away into the cupboard for hours at a time, and Harry had grown used to finding ridiculous pastimes to keep him busy. His favorite by far was watching the spiders spin their webs. He often stared for hours, finding the tapestry of silver threads fascinating, sometimes even staring into the designs, trying to pick pictures out of the intertwining threads.

Harry was a very unusual boy. Most five-year-old boys, put into Harry's position, would have whined, and thrown tantrums until they were given whatever they wanted. Harry, however, just sat silently. When told to do something, he did so without a question. When there was nothing to do, he hid in the garden and watched the insects, or he took one of Dudley's books and tried to read it.

The Dursley's did not like Harry. In fact, you could even say that they despised him. This was how Harry Potter had grown up- not knowing what love was and thinking that manual labor from a five year old was completely normal. He had no clue that the Dursley's had no right to treat him the way they did. Harry Potter was oblivious to it all as he sat in his cupboard staring through the meager light at the spider throwing its silk around into an elaborate web.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: my name is not JK Rowling; I do not own Harry Potter. I am simply stealing her characters and settings to make my own crappy story. That's all, have a nice day.

**Of shimmers and tingles**

"Wake up, boy!!!!" was the first thing that Harry heard when he awoke the next morning. Slowly sitting up, he tried to stretch the kinks out of his muscles. The cupboard was slowly beginning to feel more and more cramped with every passing day, and young Harry had noticed.

Fumbling with his belt and trying to brush his hair out of his eyes, he pushed open the door and blinked his eyes against the assault of light that greeted him. Slowly growing accustomed to the light, he slinked down the hallway as Uncle Vernon yelled again. "Get in here you lazy boy! I want my breakfast right away!"

"Yes Uncle Vernon," Harry replied in his quiet voice. He figured that he better do what was asked of him, lest his uncle get mad and take out his anger on him.

Quickly pulling out the pan and setting it on the stove, Harry went to find the bacon. On his way back to the stove, his aunt hurriedly made her way into the kitchen, yelling at Harry as she almost ran into him.

"You stupid boy, get out of my way! And where is my breakfast?!"

"I'm almost done Aunt Petunia"

Setting her plate onto the table, Harry went to go clean the dishes. Behind him, Uncle Vernon gruffly cleared his throat. "Boy, we will be going shopping today. We are going to leave you with that woman... what is her name? Mrs. Pear?"

"Figg, dear, Mrs. Figg," Petunia corrected her husband with a sweet smile.

"Yeah, well, you will be staying with her for the day, and I expect you to behave and don't do anything abnormal."

It was musty, and smelled like cat food, and there were cats all over the place. The Dursley's had just dropped Harry off at Mrs. Figgs house for the day. Mrs. Figg was nice, but she was also very eccentric and old. She had gone off to the kitchen right away, muttering about how skinny he was and how she would "fatten him up".

A while later, Mrs. Figg walked out with a piece of chocolate cake for him. Taking a bite, Harry imagined that if you could taste her house, it would taste like the cake did- old, kind of dry, and stale. Swallowing down the urge to throw the cake out, he gave a polite smile and continued eating the cake.

Mrs. Figg had shown Harry all of her photo albums, and they were all of her, and her cats. Harry didn't know what to do, he did not want to be rude, but he really did not care about her cats. Deciding that it would be easier to sneak out the next time she went into the other room, he nodded to himself. It was the only way he could escape.

As Mrs. Figg disappeared into the kitchen, he slowly got up and walked to the door. Checking again that she was in the other room, he made a run for it, throwing open the door and quietly shutting it behind him as he started to run in the direction of the park. No one would be there right now, and Dudley and his friends could not make fun of Harry or throw sand in his eyes.

Once at the park, Harry could not decide what to do. He never got the chance to play on the swings, but he did not want to right then. He actually wanted to go rest under one of the trees.

Walking over to it, the old oak did not look particularly extraordinary, but Harry felt something from it. It reminded him of how he felt when he slept wrong on one of his arms, all shimmery and tingly feeling. As he reached the tree, he put his hand out and touched the rough bark. He could feel it, something surging through his veins. Looking again at the tree with wide eyes, Harry felt, rather than saw, how old this tree was. Oddly enough, Harry felt strangely safe and comforted under the leafy canopy. His eyes started to droop, and it took the rest of his energy to lay down before he tripped, rather than fell, into a deep sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

**Pretty Kitty**

Harry never did figure out what had happened that day at the park. All he remembered was sleeping for a very long time, when he woke up it had been dark. And the Dursley's never did hear about what had happened, for some reason Mrs. Figg had kept her silence about Harry running off that day.

Harry decided not to tell his aunt and uncle about it. They would be livid about him running away from a babysitter, and the mention of feeling a tree shimmer would only fuel their anger. He remembered when he had told them of flying on a motorcycle, they had both gone unusually pale, and then locked him in his cupboard for a week.

It was almost the end of July when the Dursley's had started acting weird. Harry knew that his birthday was coming up, but did not understand why they were acting as they were. Aunt Petunia had been giving Harry more and more work each day, and they were trying to ignore him as much as possible, keeping him in the cupboard when there was nothing to do. One day he heard his aunt muttering something in a quiet and irritated voice to his uncle.

"You don't think they will come, do you? I know they haven't before, but what if they decide to check on him?"

"They wouldn't dare," his uncle had bellowed, his face growing a violent shade of purple.

"But what if they do? What if he finds out?"

"He won't, we'll lock him in the cupboard, if they come asking around for him, we will simply tell them that he's at a friends house for the night," Uncle Vernon decidedly finished.

Harry did not know what to make of the situation, were they talking about him? He was sure that they were, but what would they be hiding from him. He had been told that his parents were in a car crash and died. That was where the scar had come from. He had been left with his only living relatives, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, who had a son, Dudley, who was a couple months older than Harry. What was there to hide?

A week after eavesdropping on his relatives, Harry was working in the garden when he felt a prickling sensation on his neck, like he was being watched. Slowly turning around and looking at his surroundings, he didn't see anyone. He was just about to turn back to the garden when a movement in the shadows caught his eyes. Peering into where he was sure he had seen something, he caught sight of two yellow eyes staring at him. It was a tabby cat.

Harry's eyes widened slightly as he stared at the cat. It wasn't so much of the shock of seeing a cat in a neighborhood that didn't allow pets, or even that the cat appeared to be much more knowledgeable and aware than usual. No, the cat had a shimmery feeling like the oak tree had.

Curious, Harry slowly walked toward the cat while humming, so as not to upset it. Gently picking it up, Harry cradled the cat in his arms, much like a mother would hold her baby.

The cat started purring as Harry softly sang to it.

"Pretty little Kitty,

as beautiful as can be,

pretty little kitty,

all striped and shimmery."

"Boy! What are you doing?!?! I asked you to weed the garden, not play with stupid animals! Get over here now," Aunt Petunia's voice split through the air in a shrill scream.

Jumping slightly, Harry set the cat back onto the ground. "Sorry Kitty, I have to go. Bye bye, Kitty." The tabby cat watched as the sweet boy walked off. If a cat could look sad, this cat would have looked the part as the boy disappeared into the house. The cat turned around and trotted into an alley, and then, it disappeared with a loud 'pop!'

Five minutes later, and miles away, a woman appeared in front of a gate. Walking through it and down the dirt path, she headed up towards a majestic castle that was actually a school.

Walking up through seemingly random staircases and corridors, she finally reached a statue of a hideous looking gargoyle. It appeared to be waiting for something, and sure enough, after the woman muttered something under her breath, it jumped aside to reveal a spiral staircase.

Upon entering the room, an ancient looking man gently smiled. "Good afternoon, Minerva. May I offer you a lemon drop?"

Minerva's lips thinned a little, "No, thank you. Headmaster, as you know, I went to check on the boy today. I -"

"Must I keep asking you to call me Albus?" the man cut her off, "Well, no matter. How is the dear boy doing?"

"Those muggles are the worst sort. They don't treat him right, and he looks unusually skinny. And you should have seen the clothes they had him in! It's despicable! They had him weeding the garden, and the day before I saw him making them breakfast! He's only a five! Albus, I really think that we should get him out of there before anything happens."

"My dear Minerva, I am sure that it wasn't that bad, they are his relatives after all. We'll check on him again next year. If things are really as you say, we will take him away from them. For the time being though, I think that it would be safer to maintain the status quo."

Minerva was not happy with this answer, you could tell by the way her lips had thinned and her eyes were flashing. The headmaster simply didn't understand the whole situation. With a sigh of resignation, she turned to leave. "Very well Albus, if that's what you think is best, I'll leave you to mull over things. If you change your mind, you know where I am." With that she walked out the door, leaving the headmaster to contemplate the situation.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: as much as I want Harry, I can't have him. As much as I don't want the Dursley's, I still can't have them. So, what I'm getting at is I don't really own any of this, no matter what misconceptions you have.

**Free at Last**

He had left them. It was as simple as that. Yet the situation was so complex that Albus Dumbledore had to think over it again and again before it finally registered in his mind what had happened.

Harry Potter, savior of the wizarding world, the boy-who-lived, had run away from the Dursley's, his only living family.

They had gone to check back up on him, a year later, just as Albus had said they would. Minerva had been right. She had waited outside Number 4, Privet Drive a whole week and had seen no sign that the boy was still there. When Albus had gone to the Dursley's to personally check on Harry, they had gotten unnaturally quiet. Albus had eventually coaxed the story from a terrified Petunia, while young Dudley had watched the scene with a curious gaze.

From what Petunia had said, it seemed as if the boy had just disappeared over night. The Dursley's hadn't realized that he was gone until they noticed that their breakfast was not yet made and the dishes had not been washed.

Dumbledore's ignorance of the situation had led to a six year old boy running away. He only hoped that Harry would not blame him, that is, if Harry was ever found.

Currently sitting on an old log in the middle of an ancient forest just outside of Cornwall was the object of the headmaster's thoughts. Harry's hair had grown into an unruly mane, only barely held back by a small leather thong that wrapped it into a ponytail. Any sign of civilization on the boy had long since worn off, he was wild now.

The day that Harry had run away had been one of the worst he could remember. His Uncle Vernon had actually beaten him, just because he had accidentally burnt his bacon. A bruised and weeping Harry had stumbled to the park, thinking about the ancient oak tree where he had felt so safe. Curled up between the trees roots, Harry Potter had slept. Anyone watching the small boy would have been astonished to see, that after the boy had fallen asleep, he had shimmered away.


End file.
